I was forced to install it recently. Some PDFs from my state government required it. If I tried to open them in Preview, it complained that it needed a newer version of Acrobat Reader. So I installed it, printed what I needed, then removed it.

A lot of less technical folks though would have just kept it. Assuming the figured out that they needed to install it in the first place.

If your IT/Security staff can rifle through your sensitive data, you're doing it wrong.

I have no ability to access the data in our HR or Financial systems. Only the HR and Financial folks do. *MAYBE* the DBAs could look at that data, but even if so they'd have to sift through the raw data or come up with their own queries. And I'm pretty sure a lot of that information is encrypted.

I find it quite the coincidence that this is the first Slashdot article I've looked at today, and lo and behold, I have mod points!!

If they aren't responding, call them every day [or every hour if need be] until they dispatch a tech or ship the part.

Fan and fan-board failures on our T-series boxes [6 x T5220 + 4 T5240] are annoyingly common. Fans we usually have shipped to us overnight. Fan-board we usually have onsite with a technician to install it within 1-2 days. We're not that large of a customer to demand more prompt service or anything, we have about 2-dozen Sun servers [mix of T-series and X-series].

I don't know where people are getting this $1000/socket bullsh*t. Maybe that's some ridiculous list price, but unless you're a moron, you won't pay anywhere close to that for full HW and OS support on Sun/Oracle hardware. The last time we renewed our support, I believe it was in the realm of $400-800/yr for HW/OS support on our x86 servers [dual socket Opterons and quad-socket Xeons]. The SPARC servers were a bit more expensive, closer to $2000 for support on a T5240 [dual-socket 8-core x 8-thread/core T3+ CPUs]. Remember, that includes HW support, fans, HDs, RAM, CPUs, motherboard replacements, whatever with same-day onsite service [well, in theory, in practice it's often the next day, but most of our hw failures aren't critical to our services so we don't push them very hard].

That's not to say I love Oracle's support since the buyout. Though HW failures are typically handled fairly quickly, their support website is a nightmare, and getting an IDR [Interrum patch] on anything less than a major OS bug can be a long-term process, but I'm not sure it's significantly worse than any other vendor's support in the long-run.

So, you bitch because Ubuntu changes too much/too often. But when given a solution which remains stable for a reasonably long period of time, you bitch because it doesn't change enough? Dare I ask what it is you're actually expecting that isn't possible with Ubuntu? You can have a stable [from release changes] OS and pick the pieces you want to be newer/bleeding edge, or not as you like. What's the problem there?

Well, my sister is fairly intelligent but is by no means a geek or 'computer scientist'. She's lucky she can turn on a computer and use facebook. Despite her minimal computer knowledge and abilities, she's had no issues using and loving her Droid Incredible android phone over the last couple years. She loves it, and has no desire to move to an iPhone, and probably hasn't even ever heard of a Windows phone; though I'm pretty sure she's smart enough to avoid any phone that runs 'Windows'...

Balmer is an idiot and MS would do well to get rid of him.

I don't find that's the case at all. I had a system that came with Vista. It was certainly under-powered for Vista, with a single-core Athlon 64, 2GB RAM and the slowest 120GB SATA drive on the planet. The system was absolutely horrible. It took forever to boot, and the disk thrashed constantly. When Win7 came out, I upgraded the system [it was free for me through school]. Win7 wasn't exactly a speed demon on the system, but it ran smoothly, and I didn't have to sit there twiddling my thumbs waiting for the disk to stop thrashing every time I clicked the mouse.

Over time, I upgraded the system to a dual-core Athlon64, 4GB RAM and a pair of 10K WD Raptor drives. It ran really really well on Win7. Then for various reason, I tried to go back to Vista on that machine. Even with all the upgrades, the OS was simply unusable. It literally took a solid 3 days of upgrades and reboots just to get it up to SP2. The service packs helped performance a bit, but even with the most current updates, and all the HW upgrades, the system was still slow and unusable.

So I'd say the issues with Vista at launch were not simply an issue of the HW not being up to snuff. No matter the HW, Win7 was far, far more smooth, usable and stable than Vista ever was.

What a great way to waste $20! We picked up one of those packs some time back. They are by far the most useless batteries on the planet. In total that pack of 100 AA batteries lasted us about as long as a 4-pack of name-brand batteries.

For non-rechargeable AA batteries I've come to like Rayovac. Much cheaper than Energizer/Duracell, and they last almost as long.

Actually I was wondering if maybe there was some standing bet or ultimatum that CmdrTaco would have to retire from Slashdot when Steve Jobs retired from Apple.

At any rate, I have to add my voice to the chorus of "Thank You CmdrTaco!" Slashdot is by far the site I have been regularly visiting for the longest time and I wouldn't have it any other way.

That sounds like just about every other product the Chinese make these days, so yeah, most likely it is.

I'm not sure the US is in any position to criticize the rail system of any other nation. :)

Of course. Which is why this is not a good thing that Anonymous is threatening to do. The government will expand their definition of terrorism again, and do some more expanding of whatever trumped-up, PATRIOT Act style rules they want.

From the government's point of view, what LulzSec and Anonymous are doing is digital terrorism. Perhaps it doesn't take actual lives [yet], but it makes the masses fearful. So eventually our fine Congress is going to decide that something must be done. A digital war will be declared [or not, as it were], and our freedoms online will be taken from us in the name of security, just as our personal freedoms have been taken from us in pieces over the last 10 years.

Of course, a conspiracy theorist might decide that it was the government itself performing these acts of digital terrorism, as an excuse to put into place more control over the internet. I don't quite go that far, in spite of the fact that I'm pretty sure the government hates the openness of the internet.

Either way it saddens me. While I wouldn't mourn the loss of Facebook, I think Anonymous is just providing good excuses for the further loss of freedom and anonymity online.

They do try in some cases [rebar-reinforced foundations], and certainly on the more expensive homes they tend to have better, thicker foundations. Unfortunately the developers look at the cost and it just doesn't make sense for them to spend a fortune on a nice foundation for the cheap McMansions they've been building for the last decade .
But still, even 'better foundations' can be susceptible to the huge soil movements that are possible here. It's also largely the reason that *nobody* has a basement here.

I don't know about large commercial buildings. They tend to have landscaping and constant irrigation anyway, so that probably prevents a lot of issues right there.